Cycling Time Trials, which governs time trialling in the UK, has voted through a series of new road bike regulations designed to close down loopholes and clarify the rules around the sport.
The new regulations were voted through at the weekend's CTT AGM in Northamptonshire UK, with more wide-ranging regulations also passed covering aerodynamic skinsuit padding and handlebar reach.
The new road bike regulations were widely anticipated following last year's Road Bike Time Trial Championship in the UK, which saw complaints levelled against the bike and position used by eventual winner George Fox. He was cleared seven weeks later following a CTT investigation but suffice to say both CTT and riders are keen not to see an annual repeat of this.
Cycling Weekly was taken through the essence of the new regulations by a CTT delegate who wished to remain anonymous.
The key points of the new rules mean that riders will no longer be able to fit drop handlebars to a frame marketed for time trialling in road bike races.
Riders may also only grip the bar tops, hoods or drops with hands, without resting the wrist on any part of it.
Also under new rules, handlebars will have to have a minimum width of 350mm outside to outside, and 250mm on the inside of the drops. Reach from the back of the bar to front of brake levers – presumably on a horizontal plane, but not specified in the original proposal – would be a maximum of 22cm.
This would prevent the use of very narrow and very long bars.
More widely and across all race categories, using any kind of padding inside a skinsuit to aid aerodynamics is now explicitly banned.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the AGM was the fact that the use of bidons behind the saddle for aerodynamic benefit was not outlawed – it failed to pass by a narrow margin.
These three methods were all used effectively and, at the time, legally, by Fox in last year's Road Bike Champs, which saw him beat runner-up Alex Dowsett by 41 seconds on the 22.4-mile Midlands course.
He will now have to rethink his road bike set-up, and had already anticipated new rules being passed. Last week on social media, he posted a video with the tongue in cheek comment about his championship-winning bike: "You thought this one was bad… see you very soon".
Speaking to Cycling Weekly the same day, he said that he was more than ready to create a new set-up that met with regulations and yet was faster than ever.
I won't be able to do the same thing again," he said. "Which will mean that if they thought last year's bike and set-up looked different to what they're anticipating, I will still want to go quicker this year. I'm a bike racer. I have the record – it may be an unofficial record but I still have it.
He added: "The set-up will probably have to look different, and maybe look more different than what they saw last year. I'd be very surprised if it looked like a normal road bike. That is the simple way of putting it really."
Speaking about the new rules, aero expert Dr B Xavier Disley expressed concerns to Cycling Weekly over the consistency in the way they might be policed.
"I suppose that the main question is, who's measuring?" said Disley. "What's the process for measuring these things?"
"You've got to take a step back and, if there are regulations in there, how are they being enforced?" he said. "Because if someone's one mil over and they win a championship, then they shouldn't be awarded the championship. But you wouldn't know. You wouldn't know from a photo.
He added: "Certainly you wouldn't know if you just quickly got your tape measure out and had a go, you need to have an official proper jig."
CTT said it will comment officially once the new rules had got official sign-off.
